Social Networking: A Platform for Training New Managers Online?

“There are an increasing number of companies and online service providers who are convinced that
social networking can help overcome at least some of the issues common to the classroom-only
approach. You could think of the concept as a variation on so-called ‘blended learning.’”

Can social networking provide a practical way to help prepare new
managers for their duties? Considering the rapid growth of social networking
adoption among younger workers, this is a question well worth asking.

Creating a curriculum for training new managers and supervisors is
a common task that falls to instructional designers. The typical approach for
many decades has consisted of a combination of classroom events, each lasting
from one to five days (or more). This default design has many problems,
including travel expense and time away from the job for the managers. Not
infrequently, there are severe mismatches between what is taught and the actual
practices supported by the organization’s culture.

There is an increasing number of companies and online service
providers who are convinced that social networking can help overcome at least
some of the issues common to the classroom-only approach. You could think of
the concept as a variation on so-called “blended learning.” By combining formal
classroom instruction and online reference and performance support with online
coaching, mentoring, and informal learning through social networking, a new
manager can gain a solid theory foundation, just-in-time help, and
culturally correct application pointers.

Some history

This is not to say that this will happen just by setting up a wiki
and making all new managers open a Twitter account. Technology alone will not
suffice, and especially not indiscriminately applied, unsupported technology.
In fact, it could aggravate the new manager’s confusion and performance
problems.

Are there any precedents that offer best practice principles to
guide implementation? Let’s start by going back a century or three.

Informal learning in 1727

Formal structures to support and leverage informal learning have
been around literally for centuries. Two early examples, from the eighteenth
century, are the Lunar Society of Birmingham (whose members called themselves
“lunaticks”) in England, and Benjamin Franklin’s Junto (pronounced “june-toe,”
“juhn-toe,” or “who-n-toe,” depending on whose account you are reading) in
Philadelphia. They did not call themselves “informal learning groups” (Franklin
described his Junto as a “club of mutual improvement”), but if you look at what
they did and how they did it, the description is accurate.

How did these early groups function?

Many of the early informal learning groups were around for decades
(Franklin’s Junto survives to this day as The American Philosophical Society),
and their members were not all in the same geographic location. Their survival,
in spite of the geographic separation of their members, was due in large
measure to:

Focus on a defined area of activity: Franklin’s Junto was concerned with “Morals, Politics, or Natural
Philosophy [physics].” The Lunar Society, at least at first, concentrated on
science and its practical applications.

Ground rules and process:
Franklin provided a list of 24 basic questions to guide discussion, but he described the
heart of it this way: “The rules that I drew up required that
every member, in his turn, should produce one or more queries on any point … to
be discuss'd by the company; and once in three months produce and read an essay
of his own writing, on any subject he pleased. Our debates were to be under the
direction of a president, and to be conducted in the sincere spirit of inquiry
after truth, without fondness for dispute or desire of victory; and to prevent
warmth, all expressions of positive opinions, or direct contradiction, were
after some time made contraband, and prohibited under small pecuniary
penalties.”

Meetings were important, but they weren’t everything: Much of the activity between members (and the learning that
resulted) took place outside of meetings, in individual contacts and in
correspondence.

What does this have to do with informal learning online?

If you look at the groups that survived in the days when
“communications technology” consisted of handwritten letters delivered on foot
or by horseback, and then look at today’s online groups, many of which do not
last more than a few months, it is clear that we can learn something from those
who came before us.

First, the group members shared strong common interests within a
specific scope. Second, the process assumed that each member had something to
contribute, and it also ensured that each would contribute. Third, the
technology (paper and ink, hand-delivered letters) didn’t matter as much as the
social context.

Our technology in 2010 is vastly different from what Franklin and
his colleagues could ever have imagined, but it is still less important than
the specific scope, mutual contribution, and the accepted ground rules and
process.

Fast forward to the Third Millennium

Informal learning, as an object of attention by researchers, is not
a new topic. However, it only appeared on the radar screens of instructional
designers less than ten years ago. The emergence of online social media has led
to the notion of somehow tapping into the potential of this channel, that
carries so much of the real learning that goes on in organizations. For some,
it has become a “top of mind” concern. You can see how the use of informal
learning within organizations was emerging by 2006 in The eLearning Guild’sInformal
Learning Research Report of that year.

In our current age, we have plenty of channels in which informal
learning can take place: everything from microblogs (Twitter), to communities
(LinkedIn Groups, discussion forums), to user-created content (wikis, Weblogs,
YouTube), to social bookmarking (Delicious), and surely more to come. And we
have plenty of discussion and debate among instructional designers as to
whether learning actually does take place in these channels, even though the
efficacy of informal learning is well established. Do a Google search on
“informal learning research” if you need specific evidence.

But we also have plenty of examples of attempts at use of these
channels in which the attempts failed. The virtual landscape is littered with
the remains of abandoned wikis, content-less and comment-less Weblogs, and
LinkedIn Groups where the spam has driven out the discussion and all but
eliminated any possibility of learning. (As the administrator of The eLearning
Guild’s Group, I am happy to say that this fate has NOT befallen our Group, due
in large part to a strict no-spam policy as well as an outstanding group of
over 12,000 members.)

Existing informal learning groups online include a surprising
variety of formats, including some modeled on the Junto (for example, The
Montreal Junto http://montrealjunto.com/). A more typical example is Jay Cross’ Internet Time Community,
formerly on Ning but now on Grou.ps (http://grou.ps/internettime/). Participants in the Twitter #lrnchat sessions also comprise an
ongoing informal learning group.

Clearly, if informal learning is going to take place online, it
must be self-sustaining. What factors support this?

What makes informal learning online work?

Looking at the groups that are successful, here are the factors
that seem to drive participation and commitment by members.

Focus: By definition, informal
learning is that which takes place between individuals who self-identify in
some way as members of a group with a common interest.

Payoff: The most successful groups
provide an inherent incentive for participation; this may be tangible in nature
(personal development that leads to advancement in position or compensation),
or it may be intangible (increase in reputation, appreciation by others).

Dialogue: The group norms encourage
participation.

Leadership: There are leaders who
organize what needs to be done and keep things moving; sometimes these are
well-known people, and sometimes they are people who are known within the group
to be reliable.

Membership: The group is large enough,
and members are active enough, and there is a sufficiently diverse base of
experience that most questions draw a response in a short amount of time.

Process: There is a simple,
repeatable process in place for basic social interaction; this would include
provisions for bringing in and orienting new group members, promoting
participation, and dealing with unexpected issues.

If a group lacks focus, or focus is too narrow, if the group’s
process is too complicated, if there are not enough members, and if there are
no rewards for participation, the group will fail. Informal groups are a lot of
work to establish and maintain, and the work falls equally on all members.

Thanks for the great article, and the mention of the Montreal Junto! I'd like to point out that in the case of the Montreal Junto, the group meets once per month *in person* to teach its members; the website is used as a record to store what was discussed in the meetings and to elaborate on the contents of the presentations. Thus, it is indeed a form of blended learning but is principally done in person.

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